Taxation isn’t a dirty word
The dirty truths of our world that the Panama Papers expose are a call for two decisive changes in Australian culture, the first more obvious than the latter (8 April). We first need to find politicians with the guts to stare down the attempted intimidation of multinationals and big business, which want tax avoidance to continue to thrive without harsh public penalties. Second, we need immediate, pervasive cultural change among us all as Australians, in terms of the way we view our own taxation.
While we continue to see tax as something taken away from us rather than something we collectively receive, a healthier, safer, far more decent and sustainable society remains beyond our reach. Without this cultural shift, our politicians have all the excuses they need to continue to reduce taxes in an age where the desperate needs of this country and the world around us demand a different political agenda.
Greg Boyd
Townsville, Queensland, Australia
• Regarding the grotesque greed of Those-Who-Can and the tax-avoidance or minimisation by so many, I believe that we need reminding of some school-grade social studies: if you prefer to live in a state where personal property is recognised and will be defended by society, there have to be a few agreed-upon rules and the structures have to be paid for. I’ll put it another way: if you don’t want to live in fear of your neighbour just taking what you have or the strongest people requiring that the weaker of us wait on them, some regulations have to be accepted and taxes must be collected to pay for the system. Or it cannot work.
Many Greeks have been reminded of this recently, but all of those who are accumulating money or material possessions (by whatever means) surely must see that they require regulations as much as anybody. Such governance may be paid for by all of us chipping in and those who have more to defend should chip in more. Or else, look around: which state would you rather wake up to?
Keith Bushnell
Penneshaw, Kangaroo Island, South Australia
Flag referendum’s failure
Martin Kettle makes some interesting points based on the recent New Zealand flag referendum, but he misses a couple of fundamental aspects (1 April). Surprisingly, when citing the referendums rejecting Quebec’s secession from Canada, he overlooks that country’s flag change of five decades ago.
With regard to New Zealand, he also overlooks the clumsy efforts by the prime minister, John Key, to write for himself a page in the nation’s constitutional history by overtly backing one of the alternative flags – even to the point of wearing it in his buttonhole when representing the country on various occasions. The result? A backlash at what was seen as a blatant political attempt to influence voters’ opinions by a politician who should have remained strictly neutral.
Kettle states that “New Zealand will have a new flag one day”. Probably, particularly if, by that time, it has a new prime minister.
John Reynolds
Auckland, New Zealand
• The reasons why New Zealanders decided in the recent referendum to stick to their old flag have little to do with a desire to stick with the status quo. The new flag was rejected as much because of dissatisfaction with its design as because the prime minister, John Key, mishandled the whole issue. He put the cart before the horse by calling for design submissions rather than carrying out a poll to discover, first, whether people wanted a change.
Then there was the huge problem of the image of a silver fern on black. This attractive symbol has been hijacked by the sporting side of our population. Something less partisan, perhaps an artistic acknowledgement of our unique Maori culture, would have gained more support.
Nobody believes the subject is closed. It’s just a pity so much money was misspent when other issues, such as our appalling rate of child poverty, receive so little.
Pat Baskett
Auckland, New Zealand
A different take on smugglers
It is true that Syrian refugees have “been callously exploited by cruel people smugglers” (25 March). Thousands of refugees who sought help from people smugglers died in their search for security. It was the iconic picture of one of these deaths, that of a small boy in the arms of a Turkish police officer, that finally awakened the world to the unfolding tragedy.
The rest of the world did little to intervene as hundreds of thousands of Syrians were being killed and maimed by their own government and by the multitude of rebels. As despicable, heartless and cunning as people who set out to profit from the misery and misfortune of other human beings may be, where would the hundreds of thousands who managed to find security be today without the help they purchased?
Should Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey have built fences to keep Syrian refugees out as many “civilised” members of the European Union have? It is appropriate to be critical of human smugglers, but as we do we ought to also acknowledge that they enabled more people to flee the horror of Syria’s civil war than did most civilised nations.
André Carrel
Terrace, British Columbia, Canada
Cleaning up the US mess
In her article Obama is right. EU’s free ride must end (18 March), Natalie Nougayrède argues that Europe must take an effective autonomous role in world affairs, particularly in the Middle East, and should no longer rely on the US to act as the world’s policeman. She does not say that much of the chaos and anger in the Middle East arose from US interventions in the region.
To mention just a few: the CIA-backed overthrow of the elected leader Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, and US support of the Shah; support for Israel and its annexation of Palestinian territory; support for the military coup in Egypt that deposed the elected government of Mohamed Morsi; US support for Saudi Arabia and its bombing in Yemen; and most egregiously, the invasion of Iraq that led to the emergence of Isis.
All of Europe, apart from the UK, argued strongly against the Iraq invasion. Now Europe is struggling to cope with the flood of refugees from the Middle East and the recent terrorist attacks, both of which are in large part the result of misguided US intervention.
It is the height of arrogance for Obama to suggest that it is now a European obligation to sort out the chaos that the US has created.
Chris Kennedy
Stella, Ontario, Canada
Schooling and languages
The research on bilingualism strongly supports Tracy McVeigh’s argument about its positive value (25 March). However, I have rarely seen mentioned the virtual incompatibility of universal education and the survival of minority languages. It is one thing for an unschooled child to learn several languages when exposed to them on a daily basis: X at home, Y with the grandparents, Z at the market, etc, irrespective of whether these tongues are great or small. But as soon as you gather children into groups of 30 or 40 in an institution with hundreds of other pupils, it is essential for the institution to select one lingua franca (or perhaps two). For obvious practical reasons, these languages will not be minority tongues; they will be languages that are more widely used and probably of high prestige. This means that universal education inevitably leads to the decline and loss of minority languages, as well as less prestigious varieties of standard languages.
Norman Coe
Sant Cugat del Vallès, Spain
Briefly
Christopher Ingraham’s fine piece on friendship (1 April) tells us that the more intelligent a person, the fewer friends and more purposeful the attitude. And we are all happier living within a smaller population. Montaigne said that one good friend in your life is rare. When telephoned, British jazz great Humphrey Lyttelton would tell the phone company to change his number: “If you phone me it means that you’ve decided that what you want to talk to me about is more important than what I’m doing at the time”.
Edward Black
Church Point, NSW, Australia
• Thanks to Polly Toynbee for reminding us how much Harold Wilson achieved (1 April). He kept Britain out of the Vietnam war and avoided one in Rhodesia. We seldom give praise for avoiding conflict. I agree we should now celebrate him.
John Chapman
Bardon, Queensland, Australia
• My mouth dropped lower and lower as I read Evgeny Morozov’s article expounding the view that democracy had been taken over by Google and Facebook. Then I looked at the date of the edition – 1 April. But I am a little shocked - you normally make your April fool jokes a bit more obvious.
Alan Williams-Key
Madrid, Spain
Email letters for publication to weekly.letters@theguardian.com
